The First Muslim-Born Leader of the West

If I had been asked two months ago “Which Western country runs the greatest risk of electing a Muslim-born leader and how soon do you think this is going to happen?” I would have bet on the Netherlands somewhere in the next decade. Today, it looks as if the first Western country with a Muslim-born leader might very well be the United States next year, when President Barack Hussein Obama enters the Oval Office.

The Europeans do not mind being surpassed. Obamania has struck Western Europe. Two weeks ago, in an attempt to explain Europe’s enthusiasm for Mr. Obama, the left wing German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out that the Illinois senator is the most “European” of all the candidates in the U.S. presidential race. “Many in Europe would like nothing more than a ‘European’ America […] Obama personifies Europe’s hopes for a modern America: black, socially minded and gentle,” the German magazine wrote. As if Europe is black, socially minded and gentle…

Last week, Algemeen Dagblad, a newspaper in the Netherlands, asked the 150 members of the Dutch House of Representatives how they would vote in the U.S. elections if they could. Mr. Obama got 58 votes, Mrs. Clinton 40, while a mere 23 Dutch parliamentarians – fewer than those who said they had no opinion – would vote Republican.

There is little doubt that if Europe were to decide the American elections the next POTUS would be Barack Hussein Obama. In November we will know whether letting Americans decide their own future makes any difference. The Europeans hope it does not.

Europe is preparing itself for a Muslim take-over. Last year, an influential French Catholic archbishop told the American Catholic scholar Richard John Neuhaus that in the not-so-distant future Europe will be an Islamic continent. “We are preparing ourselves for soft Islamization,” the French archbishop said. Last week, the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, advocated the adoption of certain aspects of Islamic Sharia law in the British legal system. His remarks caused indignation from people who do not seem to realize that several Sharia courts already sit across England, Scotland and other Western countries.

Perhaps Mr. Obama strikes the Europeans as the “most European candidate” because he was born a Muslim. If America can have a Muslim-born leader, why not Europe, many Europeans will ask. They know that the latter is “unavoidable” (to use the archbishop of Canterbury’s words). In America, Mr. Obama’s Muslim family background (unlike Mr. Romney’s Mormonism) is a non-issue because he attends a Christian church. Nevertheless, being born from a Muslim father, raised by a Muslim stepfather, having been enrolled at school (in Indonesia) as a Muslim and having attended Friday prayers at the local mosque as a young boy, he cannot be seen by Muslims as anything but a Muslim, especially because he has never explicitly rejected the faith of his fathers nor said anything negative about it.

Since perception is often more powerful than reality the importance of an Obama presidency cannot be underestimated. The American political establishment, including the Republicans, are very naive about the Islamic threat to Europe. Rather than working against the Islamization of Europe American policies tend to hasten the process. America is an ally of Saudi Arabia – a dictatorship which funds the most extremist Islamic organizations. America pushes for the independence of Kosovo, which will establish an Islamist regime in the heart of Europe. America wants the European Union to accept Turkey as a member state. If Mr. Obama proceeds with these policies (as he is likely to do) and withdraws from Iraq, thereby indicating that America has lost the war, the radical Islamists in Europe will become even more arrogant than they are today.

Obviously, America is not to blame for Europe’s present predicament. The demographic and religious vacuum in Europe, which is being filled by Muslim immigrants and by Islam, is entirely of Europe’s own making. The Europeans – and they alone, not the Americans and not even the Muslims, who were welcomed to Europe – are to blame for the Islamization of the old continent. The irony, however, is that America does not seem to draw lessons from Europe’s predicament.

The specter of Islam is haunting the world. The Europeans, who lack America’s fighting spirit, are trying to appease their enemy and are hoping for “soft Islamization.” America, sadly, does not even seem to have noticed that there is a problem. It called Mr. Romney to account for his Mormonism but has yet to ask Mr. Obama for his views on Islam.

"This Barack Obama frenzy is getting out of hand.A Left-wing friend has emailed me a You Tube Obama propaganda video that reminds him - in technique - of Leni Riefenstahl's Hitler-worshipping film Triumph Of The Will.

I see what he means.To an insistent beat,impossibly beautiful,multiracial young men and women endlessly repeat the slogan 'Yes,we can',in a disturbingly mindless way.The thing contains no thought,no argument - just Obama worship.

Compared with this cult-like stuff,Hillary Clinton's clumping old-fashioned Leftism is almost reassuring".

I agree with Ovalteen. Obama has a mountain of skeletons in his closet and the Western elites and press, i.e. bourgeois marxists, are in a mystical cult-like adulation. Despite his rhetoric, his racial harmony credentials are a fraud: his pastor of 20 years is an open and avid racialist with long-standing, close ties to Rev. Farrakhan.

I think Americans take religion seriously, more seriously than most Europeans, who are all agnostic. Even the heads of European state churches appear to be agnostic, often.

Many Americans change their faith, and many more change their church. Obama's church, it is true, is a kind of fringe Christian church. But whites have long ago accepted that Black churches are different in many ways from white churches. Thus it isn't a big surprise to anyone that Obama goes to a black church that acts like it's a black church.

The whole "born a Muslim" thing doesn't resonate as a fear factor for people in the USA, again in ways that might be hard to understand. In many (most) parts of the USA you could go for three months without seeing any sign of Islam or Muslims. The Muslim population of the USA is 0.3% last I checked.

They are just not a threat here. American is being colonized by Mexican and other Latin American peoples, not by Muslims as Europe is. Americans would be a lot more worried about a Mexican-American President than one with a superficial relationship to Islam who is Black.

Richardson, the quasi-Latino candidate went down in flames. (He was a horrible candidate, too, so maybe it doesn't prove much.)

Most of us are a lot more worried about his European socialist attitudes than his quasi-Muslim background.

Thanks for your comment. Strange, however, that there was such a fuss about Romney's Mormonism, a faith which also only represents some minor fraction of the American population. Obama's Christian church is said to be close to Farrakhan "Nation of Islam". Why, given his background, is no-one in America questioning Obama about his view of Islam? Is that a vile and obnoxious question? The resident neo-con of the (London) Spectator thinks it is.

Obama is the most liberal / socialist member of the Senate. He is able to give a good speech as long as his ‘teleprompter’ is working. When the teleprompter malfunctions, he drifts off into more of a rambling rant. His campaign speeches are devoid of any substance, but they please his admirers. He seems to be an ‘empty suit’ with no original ideas.

Firstly, the quote from Der Spiegel: “Many in Europe would like nothing more than a ‘European’ America
[…] Obama personifies Europe’s hopes for a modern America: black,
socially minded and gentle...” How utterly vapid. This one phrase epitomizes every unconscious delusion that many Europeans as well as the European Media are summarily afflicted with. On the one hand, it implies, quite arrogantly, that Europe is capable of "wishing" anything for America, other than her destruction...and, on the other hand, that a European vision for America would be "black, socially, minded, and gentle." Only an idiot, or a idiot-socialist would ever connect the above-qualities in a single sentence, as if they naturally are inclusive of one-another. Does "socially minded and gentle" have anything whatsoever in common with blackness? And are they suggesting an automatic anathema for whiteness with respect to social justice? These people are abysmally ignorant of history as well as the present. NEXT, Obama is not a "Christian" in any serious sense of the term. Obama does not profess the Nicene Creed. Obama himself grew-up in Hawaii where virulent hatred of white people is a local pleasure-sport. He attended the most prestigious of schools (Punahou.) Obama's "Christian" minister and spiritual director picked Louis Farrakan as the "man-of-the-year." Mr. F. is a black muslim imam, hates whites, hates America, hates Europe, and especially hates Jews. Don't tell me that Obama is a Christian...when he chooses a legitimate Christian Church, please let me know. Until then, he is but a man who is trafficking on Christ, trafficking on the Church, trafficking on his (half-)blackness, trafficking on his citizenship and his leftist credentials, all seductively masquerading as something messianic...when in reality, he has no intellectual substance whatsoever. His practice of Law was somewhat shameful, as he revealed himself to be a pimp for muslim slumlords in Chicago. BHO has a big-big "debt" that will come due, at just the right time, from his childhood Islam and Muslim fathers. This note will be collected, from B. Hussein make no mistake...and like Europe, many of us will accept it, happily. If anything Barack says AND does proves me wrong...I will be the first to re-cant. I don't think that Obama even knows what America, Christianity, or the West truly is. With the MOST leftist voting record in all of the Senate, how could he?

Frank Lee is absolutely right, not only is Barack Obama clearly christian, the mere idea of a muslim turning to Christianity is something which is definitely sending shivers right down the spine of many orthodox and fundamentalist muslims.

So his success is not proof of the penetration of fundamentalist Islam into the Western world but is rather the opposite. Orthodox and fundamentalist muslims are abhorred by the idea of muslim immigrants coming to the West and adapting to our value systems like the Christian faith, the separation of church and state, equality of sexes... On a fundamental level they respect an orthodox christian like George Bush a lot more than liberals or christians which are former muslims.

Obama reminds me of an unexploded bomb: he comes across as someone who's trying to hide or suppress strong emotion. Whether or not he's strongly influenced by Islam, there's no doubt he has one thing in common with Muslims: he has a deep resentment for whites, perhaps an outright hatred. Remember that liberals fawned on Mugabe too, before what non-liberals saw from the beginning became obvious even to liberals.

I'm not sure that Muslims will view Obama as a Muslim. Rather, they may view him as a former Muslim who converted to Christianity and who, as an apostate, is deserving of death.

By the way, I am an American and was speaking to an Obama fan last night. I happened to mention that, though Obama is older than I am, he is much thinner. "But then, he's a smoker," I added, as a way of consoling myself. The guy I was talking too had a fit, saying that I was just repeating internet gossip and trying to trash the black candidate. That Obama's tobacco habit was established during his 2004 Senate race did not seem to matter to this guy. (Nor did the fact that smoking cigarettes is hardly an ethical lapse.) I have a feeling these kinds of hyper-defensive devotees of a political candidate are a signal that the candidate's real support is a bit soft.

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The Brussels Journal is written by Europeans, living in as well as outside Europe. The Brussels Journal is published by the Society for the Advancement of Freedom in Europe (SAFE), a Swiss non-profit organisation.